1, Introduction

In literary studies, structuralism is concerned with an analysis of texts based on

some linguistic principles. It is an intellectual movement that made significant
contributions not only to literary criticism but also to philosophy, anthropology,
sociology, and history.
Like structuralism, post-structuralism is based on the linguistic theories of
Ferdinand de Saussure and draws extensively from the Deconstructionist theories
of Jacques Derrida. Post-structuralism is centered on the idea that language is
inherently unreliable and does not possess absolute meaning in itself. All
meanings, post-structuralism avers, reside in "intertextuality, or the relationship
of the text to past and future texts" (Merriam, 1995). Intertextuality means that
every text is absorbed and transformed by previous and future texts.

2, Structuralism
1.1 The Emergence of Structuralism
By the 1950s and 1960s, New Criticism had become the dominant theoretical
approach that guided teaching and interpretation. Although structuralism shared
some of the methods of New Criticism — notably an emphasis on close reading
and attention to the particularities of the text — it was diametrically opposed to it
in fundamental ways and took the teaching and interpretation of literature in an
entirely new direction. Structuralism is a mid-20thcentury critical movement
based on the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and the
cultural theories of Claude Levi-Straus. Ferdinand de Saussure contends that
language is a self-contained system of signs, while Levi-Straus holds that cultures,
like languages, could be viewed as systems of signs and could be analysed in
terms of the structural relations among their elements.

1.2, What it is structuralism?

Structuralism, as a theoretical perspective of understanding the society and the world at large, began in
the 1960s in France. It was Claude Levi-Strauss who pioneered Structuralism. This can be understood
as an approach that highlights the existence of a structure in phenomenon. Structuralists such as
Saussure used language in order to highlight the existence of a structure in different phenomena.
According to him, a language is made up of arbitrary elements. These elements do not have any
individual meaning. It is through the system that these elements derive meaning. Through this
Structuralism brought out the concept that there were no hidden realities, but the reality was to be
identified within the premises of the structure. Binary opposition was one of the theories of
Structuralism. This highlighted that certain concepts are in opposition such as male and female.
However, the ideas of structuralism surpass the linguistic framework and were applied in other fields as
well. For example, the influence of Structuralism was to be seen in Anthropology and also
in Psychology.
Structuralism assumes that all human social activities – the clothes we choose to wear, the books we
write, the cultural rituals we practice – constitute languages and that their regularities can therefore be
codified by abstract sets of underlying rules.
According to Saussure, language is structured prior to its realization in speech or writing.
Language consists of a set of signs, each of which is constituted by a signifier (a sound or inscribed
image) and a signified (a concept or meaning). Other scholars use different words for signifier and
signified, and most add a third aspect to Saussure’s linguistic sign so as to include nonlinguistic objects
or referents. For Saussure, signs are arbitrary because a word (signifier) is linked to a concept or
meaning (signified) by the conventions and common usages of a particular speech community. Signs
do not exist outside of a system and a word’s meaning is determined by its relationships to, and
differences from, other words, with the result that binary distinctions or oppositions tend to determine
the content and normative commitments of the structure. Saussure also distinguished langue (language)
from parole (speech) and his structural linguistics focuses on language (the totality of signs that
constitute a natural language, such as French or English) and not on particular utterances.

1.3, Postulations of Structuralist Criticism

The structuralist literary theory is intimately linked with structural linguistics,
drawing a parallel between the study of literature and that of language. The
notions of sign, system, and part-whole relationship became dominant features of
the artistic and criticism of literature.Structuralist analysis seeks to make explicit,
in a scientific way, the logic that governs the form and content of all literatures.
Saussure's key points about the nature of language broke new ground for
studying literature.
First, a language is a complete, self-contained system and deserves to be studied
as such. Second, Saussure claimed that a language is a system of signs. Third,
Saussure said that the sounds that make up a language system are arbitrary

1.4, Critique of Structuralism

Despite being laudable and science-based, one of the shortcomings of
structuralism is that literature transcends mere analysis of signs. Literature would
not achieve its purpose of expressing those fundamental and socio-cultural
human desires that have passed through history, if all it preoccupies itself with is
an analysis of signs.

2, Post structuralism
2.1, The Emergence of Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism, according to Kelly Griffith (2002) evolved from Saussure's
theories of language. It accepts Saussure's analysis of language and uses his
methodology to examine the language of literary works, but it concerns itself with
the relationship between language and meaning. Post-structuralism, infact, offers
a radical theory of reading that altogether rejects the certainty of meaning. The
most influential post-structuralist critic is the Frenchman Jacques Derrida.
The basis of Derrida's radical skepticism is Saussure's distinction between
signifier and signified. Theorists of language have long maintained that words
(signifiers) represent identifiable objects (the signified).

2.2, What is post structuralism?

The theory, launched in Derrida’s paper presented at Johns Hopkins University, had its roots in
philosophy, especially in Martin Heidegger’s concept of “Destruktion”. Derrida was also influenced
by Nietzsche, Freud and Marx, each of whom brought about revolutionary ways of thinking in their
respective disciplines.

Derrida attacked the systematic and quasi-scientific pretensions of structuralism — derived from
Saussurean Structural Linguistics and Levi-Strauss’ Structural Anthropology. Contemporary
thinkers like Foucault, Barthes and Lacan undertook in diverse ways to decentre/ undermine the
traditional claims for the existence of a self-evident foundation that guarantees the validity of
knowledge and truth. This anti-foundationalism and scepticism about the traditional concepts of
meaning, knowledge, truth and subjectivity also found radical expression in Marxism (Althusser),
Feminisms (Butler, Cixous, Kristeva), New Historicism (Greenblatt) and Reader Response theory
(Iser, Bloom and others).

Poststructuralism emphasised the indeterminate and polysemic nature of semiotic codes and the
arbitrary and constructed nature of the foundations of knowledge. Having originated in a politically
volatile climate, the theory laid greater stress on the operations of ideology and power on
human subjectivity. In deconstructionist thought, the connection between thought / reality,
subject /object, self /other are viewed as primarily linguistic terms, and not as pre-existent to
language. With the famous statement “there is nothing outside the text”, Derrida established the
provisionality and constructedness of reality, identity and human subjectivity. Undermining
“logocentricism” as the “metaphysics of presence” that  has ever pervaded Western philosophy and
cultural thought, Derrida proposed the concept of “ecriture”, which is beyond logos, and
characterised by absence and difference, where there is free play of signifiers, without ever arriving
at the “transcendental signified”, where meanings are locked in aporias and can be located only in
traces.

2.3, Postulations of Post-structuralism

Post-structuralist critics are concerned with the relationship between self and
language and the culture embodied in it. Both structuralism and post-
structuralism are founded on the Saussurean principle that language must be
considered at the synchronic plane, that is, within a single temporal plane.
Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault are the chief exponents of
post-structuralism. Derrida argues that meaning is conceived as existing
independently of the language in which it is communicated and that is not subject
to the play of language. Derrida’s concepts of ‘logocentrism’ and ‘difference’ help
to show how his argument is an advancement of the structuralist position.
Logocentrism is used to describe all forms of thought which base themselves on
some external points of reference, such as the notion of truth.
Like in structuralism, post-structuralism accepts the primacy of the text. There is
nothing outside the text. Derrida's theory insists that if language in general is not
governed by anything outside it, then individual literary texts are not governed by
anything outside them. The purpose of post-structuralist criticism is to expose the
indeterminancy of meaning in texts. Derrida calls his critical method
“deconstruction”.

2.4, The central Characteristics of poststructuralism

Each critic must be capable for understanding and analyze various ideas through several studies,
interpretation in different positions. The criticism opposes of the notion of conventional concepts
of coherent identity in order to establish several perceptions and exact interpretations and exact
interpretations of the human being. Post-Structuralism denies the theory that a literary text has an
objective, its interpretation is its own. For instance, a writer may have written an one word like
‘dog’, considering a large size Labrador Retriever, but the reader could predict a small frightened
terrier according to personal experience.

3, What is the difference between structuralism and post

structuralism?
Structuralism was a literary movement primarily concerned with understanding how language works as a
system of meaning production. That is to say, structuralism asked the following question: How does
language function as a kind of meaning machine? To answer this question, structuralism turned its
attention to form. Focusing on the form or structure of the literary work, and the particular use of language
in the work, would allow structuralists to think of language as a kind of science.
The primary theorist framing the ideas associated with structuralism was Ferdinand de Saussure, who
developed the idea that language was composed of arbitrary units that were void of concept or meaning
until they acquired meaning through a language system that relied on differences between terms within
their larger linguistic and social contexts.
  Poststructuralism, on the other hand, is less singularly defined as a movement than structuralism. A
number of literary theories fall under the larger umbrella of poststructuralism, including gender theory and
reader-response theories. These theories recognize the overarching notion that meaning does not exist
outside of the text and that meaning is not fixed but rather contingent and unstable.
Post structuralism evolved alongside Jacques Derrida's theory of deconstruction, which emphasized this
concept of unstable, unfixed meaning as it functioned in language. According to Derrida, language is made
up of units that do not contain inherent meaning and relate to other units (or signifiers) through their
difference. Meaning, in deconstructionist theory, is therefore constantly deferred, never landing in one
place or becoming stable. Post structuralism emerges in this context, recognizing this lack of fixed or
inherent meaning and yet also acknowledging the need for language to acquire meaning.

4, Conclusion
In this paper, we discussed structuralism. We say Structuralism is concerned
with structures, and more particularly with examining the general laws by which
they work. Literary structuralism flourished in the 1960s as an attempt to apply to
literature the methods and insights of the founder of modern structural
linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure viewed language as a system of signs,
which was to be studied 'synchronically'; that is to say, studied as a complete
system at a given point in time, rather than 'diachronically', in its historical
development.
We also discussed post-structuralism. We noted that while structuralism
believes in the explanation of all phenomena through the science of signs, post-
structuralism objects to this position. The argument of the post-structuralist is
that meaning is not entirely contained in a sign but rather in a chain of related
issues within which signs function. The purpose of post-structuralist criticism is to
expose the indeterminacy of meaning in texts.

5, SUMMARY
In this paper, we have discussed that structuralism in general is an attempt to
apply linguistic theory to the study of literature. We can view a myth, Gena
Chewata, system of tribal kinship, restaurant menu or oil painting as a system of
signs and a structuralist analysis will try to isolate the underlying set of laws by
which these signs are combined into meanings. It will largely ignore what the
signs actually 'say', and concentrate instead on their internal relations to one
another. Structuralism, as Fredric Jameson puts it, is an attempt “to rethink
everything through once again in terms of linguistics.”
We have discussed post structuralism. Post-structuralism is based on the
linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure and draws extensively from the
deconstructionist theories of Jacques Derrida. The theory is centred on the idea
that language is inherently unreliable and does not possess absolute meaning in
itself.

REFERENCES/FURTHER READING
Blamires, H. (1991). A History of Literary Criticism. London:
Macmillan Press Ltd.
Culler, J. (1997). Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Gbenoba, Felix E. (2017). Literary Theory And Practical Criticism. JabiAbuja:
National Open Universityof Nigeria.
Gough, N. (2010). Structuralism. N.p: La Trobe University.
Krieger, M. (2019). The Theory of Criticism: A Tradition and Its System.
Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Mandal, S. (2021). A Study On the Structuralism and Post-structuralism and Post
Structur ost Structuralism In Libr alism In Library
and Information Science